


Carousel

by RosalindBeatrice



Category: Music RPF, The Beatles
Genre: Drug Use, Drug-Induced Sex, First Time, LSD, M/M, McLennon, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-09
Updated: 2016-12-09
Packaged: 2018-09-07 12:05:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8800171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosalindBeatrice/pseuds/RosalindBeatrice
Summary: 21 March, 1967. John accidentally drops acid during the mixing of Sgt Pepper. Paul drives him back to Cavendish and decides to take LSD for the first time. Based on true events. John's POV.





	

_There's something disturbing about it. You ask yourself, 'How do you come back from it? How do you then lead a normal life after that?' And the answer is, you don't. After that you've got to get trepanned or you've got to meditate for the rest of your life. You've got to make a decision which way you're going to go_.

-Paul McCartney

 

They say never to open a story with weather, but how can he not when he’s standing in the garden with his arms outstretched, vibrating to the cosmos while a radio in Paul’s parlour plays The Hollies’ “On a Carousel.” On some level, yeah, of course he knows it must be a radio, but the more the white stars throb, the more it seems like they’re making the music. The shivery ones are strumming like a guitar, the pulsing ones are the drums, and the voices are all around him, coming from the trees. He’d seen the stars up on the rooftop of EMI hours ago, the rooftops of all the white row houses stretching on for miles, but they hadn't been singing then. He can taste the yellow daffodil sound in his bones, smell it in the wet March earth and the tulips that have opened along the edges of Paul’s garden.

 

            _Riding along on a carousel_

 _Will I catch up to you_?

             _Riding along on a carousel_

 _Will I catch up to you_?

 

            It’s cold, he should go in, but he doesn’t want to, not with the stars serenading him. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t be caught dead listening to the fucking Hollies, but when the stars cover their music, it’s alright. It can’t be an accident, either, that they’re singing this particular song on night that Paul has, at long last, consented to drop acid.

            When Paul had realised what was happening, he offered to take John to Cavendish for the night. “I don’t think you’re in any condition to drive yourself home," he’d said, so dependable and in-charge that John had wanted to melt against him with gratitude. "Even if your car were here." They’d driven through the London night, the lights crowding into the car like white crocuses, and that’s when Paul had said, “I think I’d like to try it, if you have some more.”

            John had spread the contents of his trouser pockets on the kitchen table, sticks of gum, a paper with the word "imitate" written on it, and the silver pill box. He opened it and shook out the uppers he’d meant to have taken and the pinkish capsules like the one he’d gulped instead. Normally you swallowed it without ceremony, but he’d made Paul stick out his tongue. There he laid the capsule, solemn as if it had been a communion wafer. Paul was caught up soon enough.

            After an hour or two, the stars go silent and he walks back inside, fingers tingling from the cold. Paul has gone to bed and Mal, who’d sat in the parlour earlier, smoking, reading that morning’s papers, and keeping an eye on them, has gone home after being assured that the peak had struck and they’d be okay by themselves. Good ol’ Mal.

            Walking upstairs to Paul’s room is like passing through a funhouse maze. Downstairs, the radio is still going. The clapping, whistling, hooting, and percussive voices make it sound like there’s an entire party in the parlour.

 

_In the midnight, moonlight hour_

_He’s walking a long and lonely mile_

_And every time I do_ ,

_I keep seeing this picture of you_

He can’t remember who the group is, a bunch of ugly English fuckers with copycat Beatles haircuts, unware that their predecessors have trimmed theirs and grown moustaches in the meantime. There are no mirrors, but the stairs number in the couple thousand and it seems to him that Paul’s room is in the sky, up there in that black tapestry with the embroidered white stars. After the stairs come the doors, lined up by the dozens in a stretching corridor. It doesn’t bother him that they multiply. He’ll find Paul sooner or later, he always does.

 

_I try to call you names,_

_but every time it comes out the same_

 

            “Paul?” he says.

            “In here,” Paul says.

            John opens a door and sees Paul looking small in the centre of his bed, his floor littered with clothes: the wine-coloured crushed velvet trousers he’d worn to the studio, a necktie, a pair of briefs. The blankets are pulled up to his chest; his shoulders are bare.

            “Alright?” John says, sitting on the side of the bed.

            “Get me a glass of water?” Paul says. His pupils are dilated.

            “There’s one on your bedside table, git,” John says, reaching over and handing it to Paul.

            His throat moves as he drinks the water. When he finishes, he hands the empty glass to John. It looks to John like a Waterford crystal, cut like a diamond, and he rotates it in his hand before setting it back on the bedside table. When he looks again, the facets are gone and the glass is smooth.

            “I told you you wouldn’t be able to sleep,” John says. Who knows what the real time is. The universe time tells him it’s trillions of years, a pre-Cambrian age squashed into the space of a few seconds. Still, it must be bedtime somewhere, but Paul’s body won’t allow it.

            They’d travelled light years together before Paul had gone before bed, staring into each other’s eyes until it felt as though their souls had merged, amoeba-like. He'd been trying to tell Paul for the longest time that there was no need for words when you communicated on a level like that. It was hard on him, visiting such an extraordinary universe with his best friend hanging behind, reluctant, but that had all changed with tonight. 

            John reaches out and touches Paul’s hand, lying atop the blanket. The connection is still there.

            “Bloody hell, what’d you do? Your hand's like ice,” says Paul, withdrawing his hand.

            “Your garden,” John says. That says enough, he doesn’t need to explain any further.

            “Get in bed,” says Paul.

            “We won’t be able to sleep. Not yet,” John says. Dust is sparkling in the light of Paul’s lamp, a cloud of insects. He pulls off his socks and lifts the corner of the blanket.

            “No, take your clothes off before you get in,” says Paul.

            John heart swings faster, a living pendulum. This is at once as much a part of the rules as it is not part of the rules. He doesn’t dare ask why, knowing without asking that this invitation lasts only one nighttime. He ticks open the abalone buttons of his shirt. For a few seconds, they are snail shells, crawling away from his fingers. Stepping out of the legs of his trousers is like stepping out of lighthouses. He moves toward the blanket again.

            “ _All_ your clothes,” says Paul.

            It’s pointless to try to read expressions when you’re this far into it and the neurons are strung about your head like fairy lights, but still he looks to Paul’s face for clues, finding none. He would never have thought it, but he’s nervous as a virgin as he peels down his pants. Paul doesn’t watch him. When John slides between the blankets, Paul’s eyes stay trained on the ceiling. John wonders what he sees there: only cobwebs on the light fixture, or stars shooting down from above. John swallows. He’ll come down from this sooner than Paul. A big “then what” follows.

            Paul’s hand finds his. John’s mouth is dry and he hears keyboard notes ping-ponging from one corner of the room to another. Paul’s hand squeezes.

            “How long do we have to go?” says Paul, turning his head to the side.

            From the other pillow, John says, “It’ll be at least another hour or two.”

            Paul squeezes his hand again. He looks at John, steady. “I’m finding this a bit much. It’s wasting me. You sure there’s no way to turn  it off?”

            “No, mate, it’s a carousel. You’ve got to ride it until it slows down.”

            Paul’s bare shoulder brushes his, stays there, and John’s breathing gets faster. Sure, he’s thought of a version of this scenario a fair number of times. He’s a right pervert, he thinks a lot of things he’d never dare tell anyone if his life depended on it: making it with women old enough to be his grandmum, putting it in a girl’s arse, even catching some bird unawares and taking her by force. Those belong firmly in the realm of fantasy, their very forbiddenness being their allure.

            He wants to ask Paul why they’re lying beneath the covers with no clothes on, but he hasn’t got the balls. It might break the spell.

            “Has Mal gone?” says Paul.

            John nods, finding it difficult to speak.

            “I’m going to open a window,” Paul says, seeming to ooze away from him.

            John’s heart is really drumming now, though he can’t say why. Paul crosses the room and raises an arm to undo the latch at the window. He’s naked, as John thought. John feels at the edge of a waterfall, ready to spill over, but he can’t bring himself to move. Paul lifts the sill and the breeze floods in, foggy and smelling of lilacs.

            “God, that’s better,” Paul says, getting back into the bed.

            John turns on his side with his back to Paul, trying to be discreet about it. The last thing he wants is for Paul to bump against an erection he’s not expecting.

            “The thing is that I was okay for a bit, but then it gets in my head again and I just start seeing colours, you know,” Paul says.

            Through the open window, off in the distance, John can hear sirens and the rhythm of a train, the muffled bumping and rattling like birds’ wings in flight.

            Paul gasps, and John startles at the unexpected noise. “Hello?” Paul says. His voice is tight and choked. “Where’d you go?”

            John looks over his shoulder just as Paul’s arm strikes out, catching him in the back. “I’m right here, Paul.” He half sits up, still partly on his side. Paul’s eyes are panicked.

            “God, for a minute there I thought you’d sunk into the mattress. I couldn’t see you anymore,” he says, fingers flickering down John’s spine.

            “No, still here,” says John.

            “Come closer?” says Paul.

            John wouldn’t have been able to deny him for all the love or money in the world, even as he knows he’ll never be able to talk about it afterwards, no matter how much it might change him. Holding his breath, he scoots himself against Paul’s side, bare arse making contact with Paul’s warm flank.

            “Close enough?” he says.

            “I was hoping for your face,” Paul says, cupping his shoulder. “I liked the eye contact thing. It makes me feel better. Grounds me, like.”

            Swallowing, John turns over. He feels equal parts excited and afraid. His muscles are clenched with unspent energy and he keeps his hips a modest distance from Paul’s. Silver needles of light fall over Paul like rain as John meets his eyes. His pupils are so dilated they nearly blot out his irises. From the garden, a morning bird calls. The breeze from the window is damp and cool as Paul lays a hand, clammy and hot, on John’s cheek. It makes John want to close his eyes, but he forces them to stay open. No one has done this for him, not Cynthia or anybody. George, who’s taken LSD with him a fair number of times and met him on this plane, comes closest, but George could never be to him what Paul is.

As he stares back at Paul, it comes to him that Paul is a hierophant and this is an old ritual they’ve forgotten in their waking days. It only takes a moment or two of eye contact and they’re one again. The best part about it is that he doesn’t have to say a word. Paul simply knows. It seems essential that they mirror each other, so John places his hand on Paul’s face. He’s open to any benediction now. There’s no subordination now that they’re one. Paul blinks, his lashes black and captivating.

John shifts his head and shoulders closer and, closing his eyes, kisses Paul. Paul’s lips press back, his mouth open and wet. It’s the best fucking kiss of his life. It’s being handed a kilo of chocolate when you’re a child and not asked to share. It’s Christmas morning with snow on the ground and the unwrapped presents clumped under the tree. It’s your first guitar. It’s your girlfriend finally opening her legs for you after you’ve spent weeks begging. It’s hearing Elvis on Radio Luxembourg singing “ _You ain’t-uh nothin’ but-uh hound dog_ ” when you’re seventeen. It’s someone hissing “Be-Bop-a-Lula” down your sweaty neck in Hamburg. It’s the London Palladium and America rolled into one.

He returns to the perfect curve of Paul’s upper lip again. And again. It will never be enough, he realises. One night will never be enough, no matter that time has elongated like a double helix, a spiral staircase going up and up and down and down without end. Time kills me terribly, he thinks, not remembering where he’s heard it before.

Paul’s hand moves to the back of John’s neck, pulling him in closer. His eyes are like galaxies, beautiful and heavy. John removes his own hand from Paul’s cheek, hesitates. He lays it on Paul’s side just above his hip. 

Without LSD, their egos would have checked this as soon as John had stepped foot into Paul’s bedroom. They would have worried too much what this made them, whether it was legal, and how they could reconcile it as friends and musical partners.

John can see it for what it is, though, with the vantage point of acid. It’s harmony, belonging, and knowing the answers. It’s love, warmer than any love that’s wrapped him before. He's never lain naked next to somebody and loved them as he now loves Paul, where it squeezes out of every pore and he can't expend any thought, however involuntary on anything but Paul, Paul, Paul. He doesn't need to think, he doesn't need to breathe with love like this. It's eye-opening and transcendent in a way nothing has been before, maybe won't be ever again, like rain falling inside an umbrella or the sun shining in the dead of night. While he doesn’t know how to make love to a male body, he’s confident they’ll find something that works.

 Paul’s hand lingers in John’s hair, then glides down to the small of his back. Without any hesitation, he closes the space between them, shoving his knee through John’s legs so that all at once, the hips John has guarded with such care are flush against Paul’s own. The contact is a shock and John pulls back, a bit uncertain. Paul moves in and his lips nudge John's mouth open wider. The sensations are so new, but on acid John is capable of appraising them simultaneously: the heat of Paul’s tongue, the hair on his legs, the hard-on jostling his own. This is bossy, wants-his-way Paul, his fearlessness robbing John of any illusion he’s ever held about being the leader of the band. His mouth tastes of honey, lemon, and stale cigarettes. John could kiss him for hours and still enjoy revelations.

           Paul grabs him by the cock without preamble. Paul's beauty in the moment is so profound that it seems to transfigure John physically, until he’s just as pretty and feminine as Paul. He sees himself through Paul's eyes as he's never done before, not ugly and hawk-nosed, but handsome and young, with eyes the colour of forest moths' wings. So this is what it is to be a girl and be seduced by Paul, and know that you’re irresistible. He submits to the feeling, letting Paul’s hand tarry on him with a precision that borders on excruciating. Every stroke goes on for minutes. He’s aware he should use his hands too, but they seem frozen on Paul’s warm shoulders. He wants to hold Paul like this forever. He's never known love and gratitude like this before. 

            It is a long time before either of them say anything. 

            "Feel good, love?" Paul says, his voice all throat. 

"Better than anything," says John, ducking his head and pressing his forehead against one of Paul's pectoral muscles. He holds Paul close, feeling bathed in love. He wants it to go on forever. 

"I've never done this before," says Paul. There's an emotion like amazement in his voice.

"I shouldn't think so, you sod," John says. The pleasure of it all threatens to split him in two. 

"But you have," Paul says. "That's why I wasn't afraid to."

The small part of waking John that's still inside his skull says, _The fuck are you on about_? He's riding the crest upward and Paul's hand is moving faster, so he doesn't get a chance to puzzle out what Paul's words mean. That's for tomorrow and the regret that will tear at him for decades to come. To come. 

He comes, a collapsing star sending sparks rappelling into every corner of the universe. "That's it, love," Paul says, at a whisper. "God, I'm getting off on this. Come on, that's it." 

John continues to come for Paul, one long groaning sob wracking his body. He submits to Paul utterly, pouring all his love and longing and fragility into the orgasm. He doesn't have time to recover or even open his eyes before Paul clambers on top of him. In the immediate aftermath of his pleasure, what would have been dead frightening feels right. 

           Paul slots himself in the juncture between John's thigh and groin, and thrusts. He's fucking John like a bird and John, to his shock, isn't bothered a bit by it. He grabs John by the shoulder with his left hand, hot and sticky, and presses the other onto John's hip, angling himself. The hair on his forearms and underarms is dark and masculine, and he smells intoxicating. John stares up, mesmerised. He wants to bottle this feeling so he can drink it the rest of his life. It's falling in love on top of having loved someone since the beginning of time. He's so happy Paul dropped acid, so happy he's doing this. He strains against Paul's left hand, trying to lift his head for another kiss. Paul gives him a quick one, presses him back down again. 

           "Just a minute," he says, his breath a gasp. "I'm close." His lips are red and his hair is sticking to his forehead. He's making John sore with the friction, but the last thing John would do is complain. 

          "Oh ..." The sound leaves Paul's lips and seems to echo about the room, and the motion of his hips slows, becomes more undulating, as he comes. 

          John's core is warm with love. Paul, Paul, Paul, beautiful Paul. He reaches for him and Paul collapses on top of him, half rolling off before coming to a rest with his head in the crook of John's arm. 

        "That was like landing a rocket on the moon," he says. John knows what he means. 

        Though John's post-orgasm, the LSD doesn't permit him to feel sleepy. In fact, he rather fancies getting up and writing a song or having a bath, but he can hear dawn birds singing outside the window, maybe inside his head. The time is growing short. He can't imagine what life will feel like once the effects of being high have faded. He'd prefer just to drop acid again and stay here with Paul. 

         "Alright?" he says to Paul. 

         "I think it's fading a bit," says Paul. "I'm not seeing so many colours."

         John feels they could write a song just lying here, passing words and chords back and forth inside their heads. Paul shifts away and lights a cigarette. He hands it to John and lights another. As John takes a drag and the paper burns back, the smouldering tip of the cigarette looks to him like a sun. He watches it, wondering what's burning up in its atmosphere and what distant earth it's lighting, until the stub is too small to smoke any further. 

**Author's Note:**

> My two aims with the story: 
> 
> 1\. I wanted to do a John-Paul acid story that didn't feel so clichéd or predictable in its depictions of tripping.  
> 2\. I wanted to try my hand at PWP.
> 
> I hope I've succeeded on both counts! 
> 
> If you need a refresher on the real events that inspired this story, I direct you to the Beatles Bible: https://www.beatlesbible.com/1967/03/21/recording-mixing-editing-getting-better-lovely-rita/


End file.
